We used to run crons using a custom wrapper which handled locking, logging, state reporting and enable/disable via puppet. However, systemd timer units basically do all of this for you, so I'd recommend that instead.
Can you please share any resources to understand it more in detail? With flock, I am facing issue with lock files, if cron crashes or system reboots, lock files are a big pain.
IME, flock works fine across SIGKILLs and forced reboots. Are you trying to use flock on a filesystem that runs across multiple kernels (i.e., networked fs), by any chance?
